Lessons from a year off Instagram

What began as logging off evolved into reclaiming my life

Out on the land with our pup Hank and Zelda, our mini elder ;) One of my favorite days in early January

One year ago, I left Instagram for good. I shared about my decision in this essay.
Here’s what unfolded…

A walk with my family through the Sierras feels different when I’m present. It feels different when my awareness flows freely from our children’s laughter, to the Red Tail Hawk soaring overhead, to the scent of the lupines, to the welcomed exhale from my lungs that comes from feeling like I am enough in that moment. That we are enough.

Just a mother on a walk with her family and pack of rescue dogs.

Nothing to prove. No perfect photo to post.

Just pure, unglamorous, presence.

A year ago this kind of sustained presence with my family felt out of reach. Moments like this were frequently interrupted by the compulsion to check my Instagram stats, the persistent feeling of inadequacy, and an unspoken urgency racing through my nervous system demanding that I hurry up and improve myself or my content.

Somewhere between stopping for snacks for the third time in forty minutes (welcome to having three young kids!), our giant sixty-pound puppy running through the mud, and the realization that I did not want to be any place else in that moment, it hit me just how far I’ve come in this last year since logging off Instagram.

What began as logging off evolved into reclaiming my life.

Breaking the Addiction Cycle

Like kicking my addiction to alcohol, the first month off Instagram was rough. I experienced increased levels of anxiety, agitation, and a sadness that I couldn’t locate. Strong urges to get back on the app and significant mood swings were the norm. Over these four weeks I became more aware of how often I picked up my iPhone in search of relief in moments of stress, overwhelm, or grief.

The dopamine withdrawal period is surprisingly real.

It was difficult not to scroll during the few moments I found myself alone in the day: in line at the grocery store, on the toilet, stopped in traffic, waiting for water to boil, at night when I wanted to check out, or in those first bleary minutes after waking. The spaces between activities that once allowed for daydreaming, simple presence, even boredom, had become compulsive scroll zones.

It was illuminating and disturbing to reckon with how much this app had a hold on me. How much it occupied my attention. How much it fragmented my ability to focus. How much it extracted from my life. How much it kept me glued to this behaviorist training device like some Pavlovian creature, mindlessly pressing buttons for measly rewards. Desperate for validation and relief.

Coming down off a hyper-stimulated dopamine brain wasn't as severe as my alcohol or cocaine withdrawal—I wouldn't die from quitting Instagram as I might have from substances. Yet despite this rationalization, those early weeks without Instagram were surprisingly difficult. I knew in my body the app was making me ill, but I struggled to articulate exactly why.

As I sat with this discomfort, deeper questions emerged: when did I start believing that pain wasn’t reason enough to quit? When did I stop trusting myself?

Thankfully, determination runs deeper than bad habits.

I managed to white knuckle it and the relief slowly followed.

Sometime last November, I noticed a shift in my dopamine sensitivity. It showed up during a horseback riding lesson. I got back in the saddle after a twenty-year hiatus. At the end of an hour long ride, relearning the basics of posture, leg placement, and allowing my body to move with the horse, I felt a sense of pleasure that had long been dormant. For the entire hour I focused on my breath, connecting with the horse, and absorbing the sheer beauty of the autumn foothills. By the end of the lesson tears of gratitude rolled down my cheeks.

This is exactly what I want to be doing with what precious time I have on this planet, I thought to myself. And it wasn’t just about riding horses. It was about feeling the inherent pleasure in being alive, something that social media took from me.

Life Attention Restored

Last year I named specific intentions for quitting Instagram. I wanted to give more attention to our children, my body, my partner, and my writing. I found my way back to each of them—though not in the ways I expected. Tending to my relationship has been harder than I anticipated, and writing, it turns out, required me to step away from it altogether.

Our children received far more of me this past year. While Sol was in school, I drove them weekly to connect, joined field trips, and volunteered in their classroom—not out of duty, but a genuine desire to be present. With Zen, my presence took another form: actively seeking more care that finally brought him restful sleep after years of deprivation. After seeing a miracle worker in Berkeley, he's slept through the night for a month—a gift I'm fully present to witness.

I also stayed engaged with our foster daughter's welfare case, attending every court hearing—some deeply uncomfortable. Though I craved Instagram's distraction in those courthouse waiting rooms, I chose instead to stay with the discomfort, present in my body. For her sake, no matter the outcome.

My body—without Instagram's constant comparisons—has felt like mine again. I've tended to it with more grace: going to sleep with the sunset, drinking more water, embracing my grey hairs, learning how to put on concealer for mature skin (apparently I’ve been doing it wrong for a while), and prioritizing protein. The resulting boost in energy, mood, and concentration has been such a welcomed change.

Being off Instagram also gave me the bandwidth to dive deeper into psychedelic therapy where I’ve been exploring my lifelong pattern of dissociation. I’d love to say it solved all of my partnership issues, but the truth is, I’m in the thick of major change. I’m learning to be present not just procedurally—through breathwork or grounding techniques—but on a nervous system level, without needing to do anything to feel okay.

This change process is hard. I have a part that wants to run when things feel like too much and another that wants to fight when I feel to blame. Those parts are tough to hold in partnership.

During a recent conversation with Nic, my jaw clenched and breath shortened. Previously, I might have excused myself to the bathroom to scroll Instagram until the sensations passed. Instead, I stayed—present with the discomfort, without dissociating into social media. It felt like learning to breathe underwater.

And still, Nic and I keep showing up—for each other, for our family—even when our best feels like it sucks and that it’s barely enough.

And for my writing, I spent most of last year working closely with Erin Shetron on essays and breathwork immersions—work that felt deep and dear. And then I needed a break—from writing, from teaching, and from being online altogether. The well was dry. My health needed me. My family needed me. I needed space from public sharing.

What I thought would be a deepening of my writing practice became a fallow season instead. But perhaps stepping away was its own form of devotion—the most generous attention I could have offered.

The Sustainable Present

2025 has already proven to be a year of intensity on every level. From the instability of our country’s leadership, to the raging fires in my beloved California, to the overall feelings of uncertainty in this strange and wild time. I cannot emphasize enough how grateful I am to be off Instagram.

Just to test my resolve, I logged back in a few times over this last month on my computer. Within minutes I felt the familiar pull of the comparison trap calling me back. After months of looking inward instead outside myself for validation, I got sucked into feeling unsuccessful, unpopular, overweight, and like I had nothing to show for my life.

While I may miss the occasional trend, podcast recommendation, or hilarious meme—even the comforting illusion of a larger community than I actually have—I've never felt more clarity and groundedness in my decision to stay away from that dumpster fire.

A year ago, getting off Instagram felt like such a radical decision. Especially because I felt in my body how committed I was. I knew I wasn’t going to get back on in a month or six months or a year. What in the beginning felt like an unattainable dream, to break free from the dopamine addiction and fame chasing comparison trap, is now my natural state.

My desire for a deeper level of attention and presence is my chosen reality.

And, my self-worth is no longer enmeshed with an app that has zero positive intentions for me, and that is in fact, trying to harvest my precious eyeball attention and shaky self-esteem for its own profit. Now, that actually feels radical, doesn’t it?

My vision for the rest of 2025 is to continue to safeguard my attention. For years I thought success was more followers, more likes, more sponsored posts, more money from social media deals, more consumption, more external validation. What I’ve come to understand this past year is that if I keep giving away my attention, the success I desire—which has much less to do with the material plane and much more to do with feeling alive and connected in as many moments as possible—will always be out of reach.

Just last month, I declined an invitation to teach breathwork for a popular brand that would have significantly boosted my visibility. The old me would have jumped at the opportunity, regardless of how it aligned with my time boundaries. Instead, I evaluated how much attention it would take from my family, creative practice, and health. Choosing to protect my focused attention felt more aligned with success than most promotional opportunities could offer.

The other day our kids and I were on the far side of our land. It’s a special place with its mossy granite outcroppings, sea of wildflowers, and that old cedar tree by the road where Sol and Nic watched me catch our first bee swarm. Each child found a special stick, carving elaborate patterns in the wet dirt as they walked. They moved in silence, focusing on the marks from their sticks, weaving in and out of each other's drawings with ease. I stood back, observing them for a long while. It’s rare that the three of them play together in harmony, let alone in silence.

A year ago, this magical moment would have been missed. I would have reached for my iPhone, determined to capture rather than experience it. While waiting for the image to upload with our painfully slow county bandwidth, I would have drifted further from the present moment. My children, sensing my attention had gone elsewhere, would have abandoned their harmony for stick-wielding conflict. And later, looking at that "perfect" image and whatever caption I wrote on the fly, I would have felt empty—the hollow reminder of another moment with my children that I was too distracted to witness.

Watching my kids create their own world revealed just how much my relationship with attention has changed. It also affirmed I had what I was seeking all those years on social media that never materialized.

That’s the thing about apps like Instagram—deep down we’re all looking for something on them. And we never get it.

It’s a trap that sucks us in and it can be so challenging to claw our way out. To reclaim our attention, our relationships, our desires, and our lives.

As I stood with my feet firmly planted on the granite, this came to me: true success isn’t a grid of perfect moments. It’s the ability to be fully present for the imperfect ones.

Not validation from strangers, but the depth of my own experience.

This quiet moment with dirty sticks and muddy children—this is what I was seeking all along.

💬 I’d love to be in conversation with you.

How has your relationship with attention, presence, or social media been evolving lately? I can’t wait to connect with you. x